Transcription
So, um, the whole topic of the disrobing of Dropadi, that's another one. That's one of the more popular scandals I've created, ironically. It's like, what's that expression? You want your cake and you want to eat it too. So, Bhaktivikasa Swami wants to criticize me for not following shastra, and then when I do follow shastra, he criticizes that too. So, it's, uh, I guess I can't win.
Here's the point. Let me explain all this. I wrote an essay called "Understanding Prabhupada," which, for those who are not afraid of having their spiritual life destroyed by reading something I wrote, uh, you can find at hdg गोस्वामी.com. There, Prabhupada makes, I quote Prabhupada extensively, and shastra, uh, where Prabhupada says that the ultimate authority is shastra. There's guru, sadhu, and shastra. Ultimate authority is shastra. Now, among the shastras, according to Lord Chaitanya, according to Jiva Goswami, according to Prabhupada, the most important shastra is the Bhagwatam. That's our principal work. Prabhupada said the Bhagavad Gita, of course, introduces you to all the important ideas, and the Bhagwatam is the most important shastra.
So, regarding Dropadi, I am following the Bhagwatam. I'm following the Bhagwatam, which I'll explain. Uh, the Bhagwatam mentions the offense to Dropadi in the gambling hall several times, and each time says the same thing. The offense was touching her hair. Kacha sparsha. It's one of them. Kacha means the hair. Sparsha, touching. Hata, was destroyed. Ayusha, their duration of life, as in Ayurveda. So, to understand why these Kshatriyas could, these kings, could destroy their lives literally by touching her hair, uh, you have to understand how powerful symbolic anatomy is in, in this culture, in Vaishnava culture.
So, for example, we sing, "Bandhu re, Sriraindum." There are just endless verses and songs talking about serving the feet of the guru. Now, what that, what that does not mean is that to please your guru, you have to become a pedicurist, you know, or a maybe a podiatrist, you know. That's not what it means. Although, I mean, if someone wants to volunteer to be my pedicure, so I, but anyway, so, um, that's not what it means. It's symbolic. It means serving humbly. It means it doesn't mean you have to literally become a podiatrist or, or a, uh, or a pedicurist. It just means that you have to serve humbly because the feet, to go to the feet is an act of humility. And of course, we physically, uh, bow at the feet of the great souls like Prabhupada.
But now, just as the head was is a very powerful symbol, anatomical symbol, sort of symbolic anatomy, it's very powerful. It it permeates, it pervades our Vaishnava culture. Similarly, the head is equally powerful, as you could say, symbolic anatomy. And, and the best example of this, I think, is when, um, Krishna, Arjuna bring us back to the Kuru military camp because he has killed the five sons of Dropadi. And even it's said, the Bhagwatam says, Krishna was like, "What are you doing, Arjuna?" He, he wanted Arjuna just to kill him, but he brought him back to the camp. And then a big debate broke out between Bhima and Dropadi. And of course, Bhima, no surprise, said, "Kill him." And Dropadi said, "Muchheta, let him go. Let him go. Because I can't do this to his mother, because I know what it feels like as a mother to lose a son. Don't do that to him, to his mother."
What's interesting is, like, in the last, a year or two ago, there was this huge debate in ISKCON about how to punish or not punish a senior devotee that did something wrong, and people got so, it's like everyone saw people on the other side almost like as demons. But the simple fact is, here we have two pure devotees, intimate associates of Krishna, you know, we should only be so lucky, Bhima and Dropadi, and, and they disagree on punishment, which no one noticed, you know. It's, uh, no one noticed that. So anyway, the reason I mention this is that, um, when the Bhagwatam says that they touched her hair and therefore they were killed for it, that was a capital crime to touch a woman's hair, like to pull her, she was dragged by her hair into the gambling hall. That was a capital crime punishable by death.
Now, why do I say, even though so many acharyas said, well, you know, they tried to disrobe her, because there's two important things here. Number one, I mean, I could go, I could talk on this for hours, but I'll just try to give you the main point. If you look at the Vaishnava approach to knowledge, or the Vaishnava approach to just understanding Krishna consciousness, the acharyas are extremely, what's the word? Um, demanding, extremely, uh, precise about philosophy. But when it comes to pastimes, they're much more liberal. Now, one example is, there are famous devotees in ISKCON who sort of, devotees go to Vrindavan, or they go to other places, and they talk about all these different pastimes of Krishna. Now, I've attended some of these sessions, and I would say that a strong majority of all these pastimes that are being described are not in shastra, and that doesn't seem to bother anybody.
One time, a very well-known sannyasi in ISKCON, or was in ISKCON, uh, was taking me on a tour around Govardhan, and he said that, um, you know, here the gopis met Krishna and did this, and there Krishna did that. And after we'd been through about a couple dozen of these, I just said to him, "Where did all this come from? What's the authority for this?" And his answer, the senior sannyasi's answer was, "I don't know. No one ever asked me." [snorts] So even within ISKCON, devotees go to Vrindavan or hear different speakers that tell all these pastimes, many of which are not in shastra, and I don't think does anyone ever ask, "What's the authority for this?"
So you find Sanatan Goswami, and I think maybe Brihad Bhagavatamrita, if I get this right, but one of his books like that, he says that in the Bhagwatam, the Bhagwatam says that Krishna's pastime of killing the Keshi demon happened like this, but actually, that's not really, it was really like that. And you have Jiva Goswami, for example, who is a very powerful, uh, preacher in favor of Raja and Krishna having Swakiya Rasa, like a married relationship. And most of the acharyas disagreed and said, "No, it's part of Parakiya Rasa, it's like a paramour." And, uh, Bhakti Vinoda Thakur, in his Go Choo, the last many chapters with his whole book, it's like 1100 pages, comes to a powerful crescendo, this dramatic close, where we're hammering home the point, it is Swakiya Rasa. And so there's disagreement among acharyas, and, you know, about details of Rasa.
Now, in the case of Dropadi, here are some shastra things where I'm not just following my own atheistic, rebellious, useless mind. I'm actually following shastra. Because in the Bhagwatam, the offense to Dropadi in the gambling hall, the Dushasana, is mentioned several times, and each time it says the offense was touching her hair. Not a word about trying to strip her, nothing about that. And even in the Mahabharata, a very, very strong majority, almost all the existing manuscripts, surviving manuscripts, don't mention that Krishna gave her cloth.
Now, there's another point which comes from the Mahabharata itself, and that is when the first time that Dropadi meets Krishna after this incident, and she's almost angry at Krishna, and she says, "When I was being offended in that way, why didn't you come to help me?" And Krishna answered, "Because at that exact time, the, what I, the person I call the, uh, the demonic aviator, you know, Shalya, came with his airship to Dvaraka, attacked Dvaraka, and Krishna said, 'I had to save the city of Dvaraka, that's why I didn't come to help you.'" Now, why would Krishna say that? Why would Dropadi say to Krishna, "Why didn't you come to help me?" if he did come to help her?
Another point, when Arjuna, this is from Mahabharata also, of course, none, none of this is from shastra. It's all from my, you know, sadly, uh, polluted mind. But actually, um, in the Mahabharata, when, when Subhadra and Arjuna elope, I mean, it's called Subhadra Harana, taking away Subhadra, but they actually eloped. I mean, they were scheming together how to get out of the city. And so then, when the Yadus realize what's happened, they're really angry. Even Balaram. And they go to their Raj Sabha, their royal assembly house, and they're, they're very mad. "Arjuna didn't respect us. He disrespected us. He didn't give us any gifts, didn't get our blessings." They're really upset. Krishna [clears throat] stands up because they said, like, you know, he didn't give us any gifts or anything. Krishna, as in the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Krishna stands up and said that women are not property. Women are not property. You can't buy and sell them. You can't gamble them. You can't, you know, they're not property.
Now, maybe you are comfortable. Maybe Bhakti Vikasa Swami's comfortable with telling people that in Vedic culture, women are property. They can actually be gambled, like, you know, like a piece of gold, or like maybe some valuable furniture, or maybe some real estate. You can, because they're just property. And if a man gambles his wife and loses, and maybe a hundred men, because there were a hundred sons of Dhritarashtra, maybe a hundred men will have sex with that person, and, you know, that's just Vedic culture. Personally, I'm not prepared to tell the world that the solution to all the world's problems is a culture in which women are property that can be gambled away. I'm not ready to do that. You know, if that's a lack of Krishna consciousness on my part, tough luck for me. But I don't even think it's good for the world. I don't think it's good for the world to have a culture where women are property that can be gambled away. I don't think that's what Vedic culture is.
So then, perhaps in his, well, one of his most flattering remarks, I mean, me being brainwashed and mentally captive to atheistic professors, that was a pretty good one. But if anything can top that, uh, Bhakti Vikasa Swami has compared me to a gorilla, but not an ordinary gorilla, a gorilla from Krishna Lila. So I suppose that's sort of what they call a left-handed compliment. But anyway, this DVD gorilla had been a friend of Sugriva and, um, then he committed offenses and became proud. So I have become proud and gorillalike, according to Bhakti Vikasa Swami. But, um, I don't think that's what I'm doing. I don't think I'm exactly acting like a gorilla. I think what I'm actually doing, sorry, it's just, you know, we have to find amusement where we can in this day and age. So I think I'm actually carrying out Prabhupada's [laughter] instructions to me, and I don't think my behavior is not entirely gorillalike or, uh, offensive or atheistic or against Krishna. I hope not.
Anyway, but the good news, here's the good news, everybody. For anyone who hopes that maybe I can somehow save myself from this horrible situation I'm in, that I can redeem myself. Uh, for many years, he has hardly been involved in [laughter] sorry, it's just like this is so crazy, it's so absurd. I don't know where he got this. Must be a parallel universe. For many years, he has hardly been involved in preaching to academics. I'm the academic director of the academic center of the world Hari Krishna movement, and all I've been doing is emphasizing that we've got to stick to Prabhupada's arguments, and, and we have to, we have to really spark, spark an intellectual revolution. That's all I've been doing.
But it's interesting because someone like Bhakti Vikasa Swami, who apparently obviously has never really been, uh, interested in doing academic work, even though I'm doing exactly the same thing I was doing before when I used to be a good devotee. He doesn't understand it. He actually doesn't understand what I'm doing. He didn't ask me. He didn't, he obviously hasn't listened to many of my lectures, or any of them. Uh, and so he just is wildly inaccurate. If anything, other devotee scholars kind of see me as a little, maybe, you know, really militant, like, "Do we have to be that heavy?" And so, um, yeah, this is just wildly inaccurate.
But now I want to get some other points, um, which I think are, uh, important. Uh, let's see if I can find them now. Oh, yes, uh, Vedic culture. You've probably heard this a million times, so I'll try not to just, you know, bore you to death, but I want to talk about a philosophical point, and that is, is there really, is there really like a one specific eternal ethnicity? Like, there's a Vedic way to dress, there's a Vedic way to cook, there's a Vedic way to do architecture, there's a Vedic way to do music, and, you know, let the world go to hell. We're not going to change that. We're not going to do non-Vedic art, non-Vedic, uh, uh, you know, dress, non-Vedic cooking, etc., etc., etc. So now I'm going to give you a whole bunch of evidence to show you that that idea is pretty, uh, silly.
First of all, the very word "Vedic culture." This is a point I've made many, many times. In Sanskrit, if you, if you look at, if you juxtapose Sanskrit and English, many Sanskrit words have direct literal translations into English and other languages. Some examples: Deva, God. That's completely literal. In fact, the word Deva is a source for our English word "divine" or "divinity." And, uh, and so on, all almost all modern and all the Indo-European languages. So the word Deva, God. Perfect. Ishvara, Lord, or Isha, Lord, or Master. Um, Prakriti, nature. For example, the Sanskrit word Prakriti can mean either, you know, the birds and bees and lakes and trees, or it can mean your own nature, like, you know, what kind of personality do you have? Exactly the same in Sanskrit. So the word Prakriti in Sanskrit can mean the birds and bees and trees and, you know, horses and sunrises and all that, or Prakriti can mean your nature, what kind of person are you? What are your propensities? Like, are you a Brahmana or Kshatriya or Vaishya or Shudra? Do you want to get married? Do you want to not get married? That's also Prakriti in the Bhagavad Gita. So to translate Prakriti as nature is a perfectly literal translation. There's all kinds of words like that. There's all kinds of words. So many Sanskrit words have direct equivalents in English and other, especially Indo-European languages.
However, some English terms that we have do not have a, don't come from a literal term or or expression in Sanskrit. One of those is "Vedic culture." Now, what do you mean by "Vedic culture"? If you mean, I'll tell you what Vedic culture actually is, if we want to use that term, even though there's no direct equivalent in shastra. In shastra, the only equivalent would be, uh, da varnashrama, the varnashrama system, which is dedicated to Krishna. That's it, with, you know, just a, you know, few words. That's what Vedic culture is. Varnashrama dharma dedicated to Krishna. But if you mean by culture, ethnicity, a way of cooking, a way of dressing, a way of, a certain kind of architecture or music, and if by that you say "Vedic" or a way of dressing, and it really looks like that's what Bhakti Vikasa means, Bhakti Vikasa Swami, if that's what you mean, no, it's not in shastra. There's no divine ethnicity, like an ethnic tradition, like you could say, "Okay, this is traditional Mexican music," or that, or "this is a traditional Balinese folk dance," or "this is, you know, sort of traditional Bulgarian cooking." So if that's what you mean, that there's that Krishna has brought down to earth from heaven, from Vaikuntha, an ethnicity, no evidence at all in shastra. No evidence in shastra.
Can, now I'm going to give some examples of that, and then I want to add one more point, and then we'll go down the list. Pure devotees like Prabhupada, who's a pure devotee, seeing Krishna, to see Krishna, to be a Mahabhagavata like Prabhupada, does not mean that you, that you can time travel. There's no time travel in our shastras. There is the case where different systems of time, like maybe 10 minutes on a higher planet is a thousand years on Earth. That's not time travel. It's just, it's like, you know, Einstein's theory of relativity, where time can move differently in different places or different speeds. It's not time travel. There's no story. There's nothing in the Bhagwatam about someone going back in time. You know, the time machine. There's no Vedic time machine. And there's no evidence that acharyas look back in time or actually seeing what happened before.
Now, it is said that Vyasa, for example, or other great devotees are tri-kala-jna, literally knowers of the three times, past, present, and future. But if you look at the context, when it says that, it's not that Vyasa is looking back to specific events and seeing people do things. And it also doesn't mean that he's looking to the future. He can actually see events unfolding that haven't happened yet. That's Hollywood. It's not, it's not the Vedas. So whenever it talks about someone being tri-kala-jna, it's knowing planetary and cosmic seasons. Like, for example, I'm going to show my powers in this ISKCON guru and make, and I'm going to tell you something about the future. In the northern hemisphere, it's going to get colder the next several months, right? I just revealed the future to you. If you're in northern Europe, if you're, and, or if you're in the southern hemisphere, I can see with my powerful guru eye, there's going to get hotter. So that's the kind. So Vyasa saw the Kali Yuga's coming. He knew what Kali Yuga is. Other people are not aware of it. Those of us who are learning from Prabhupada, we know it's Kali Yuga because we see it every day. But back then, it's not that everyone knew that Kali Yuga is coming. And so Vyasa could see it, and he predicted what it would be.
Now, I'll give you some examples which show that Prabhupada was not, and never claimed to be. I'm not offending Prabhupada. I'm not, I'm not saying, "Well, Prabhupada claimed this, but it's not true." That's not what I'm saying. Prabhupada never claimed to do time travel. So, for example, Prabhupada approved art, Panchatattva pictures where Srivas is pictured as a young brahmachari, but in fact, he was an elder grihastha. So it's not that Prabhupada was looking, seeing the past. And then, uh, other ahistorical features that Prabhupada approved. In other words, things that, according to everything we know from shastra and history, that's not the way it was. Uh, pictures of the gopis, including Radharani, with covered heads. There's no evidence that in shastra that they covered their heads, or any women covered their heads. That was a Muslim custom that actually, in it, became prominent in India under Muslim rule. Um, the gopis wore belts, and other women wore belts. When's the last time you saw ISKCON with a gopi with a stylish belt and a skirt? Consider other things where, and yet other things where Krishna is absolutely present, but the way Krishna is presented is ahistorical. Consider how the deities are dressed. We have Gaura-Nitai deities all over the world, and they are dressed in very opulently with jewels and silk. They never dressed that way. That's not historical. But they're present. All of us know that Gaura-Nitai in their authorized deities are very powerfully present. So you can be a seer, you can be a tattva-darshi. You can see the truth. You can see God, because that's what we're doing when we go to our temples, or even look at pictures of Krishna. We are seeing God, actually, more than we realize. And yet, it's not historical. That's not how Gaura-Nitai dressed, but they're definitely present, and that's really Gaura-Nitai, but it's not historically accurate.
Another point, geography or topography. If you look at, you know, ISKCON art, or even Indian Vaishnava art, and look at pictures, paintings of Govardhan, it does not look like the Govardhan that people visit nowadays. It just, they're very different. We have so many paintings of Govardhan where it's like these lush, this huge lush hill with sort of gentle slopes and cows grazing and green grass and everything. That's not at all like the Govardhan we see today. And yet, it's really Govardhan. I mean, you know, when you look at these pictures, you're really connecting with the eternal Govardhan. The point I'm making here is that, okay, Krishna, Krishna is visible to us, and, and, and in, of course, the most powerful, powerful way, visible to great devotees like Prabhupada, in, in three different dimensions. One dimension is historical. Krishna appeared 5,000 years ago, and yeah, it was really Krishna on this planet. Another one is in the mind of a pure devotee like Prabhupada. Krishna appears in the mind of a pure devotee, if, just like Krishna appeared to Dhruva, and so on. Another way, third way is Krishna's in the spiritual world. And so the reason I mention all this is because, uh, my dear godbrother Bhakti Vikasa Swami's arguments are based on the assumption that there is one unchanging, absolute, eternal way to dress and eat, and I don't know, you know, play music, do kirtan. And if you don't do that, you are really killing your spiritual life. You are violating Vedic culture, and you're basically doing more harm than good on this planet. And so my point is that the great acharyas never saw it that way. Prabhupada did not object to these lush paintings of Govardhan, even though he knew that what's left after erosion or whatever else happened, uh, after all the, you know, thousands of years of who knows what geology or just Krishna's mystic power, the Govardhan in India looks very different. And Prabhupada knew that, but he didn't object to the paintings. That should tell you something.
Consider books by great acharyas. Jiva Goswami's Gopala Champu, which I've been going over with a devotee. And, um, in the Gopala Champu, you have descriptions of Vrindavan which are just not like, uh, what we know about, well, the way the, not just Vrindavan, just describe the culture there, which, which is not like what we know historically to have been the culture, say, 500 years ago in Vrindavan, for example. For, uh, unlike the Bhagwatam, in Vraja, there are palaces, I mean, very opulent palaces. There are soldiers. There are assembly halls. In other words, it's very much like Dvaraka. And if you read the descriptions of Vrindavan, I'm talking about, you know, topography and, and, and flora, you know, the trees and, and just the everything. Jiva gives a different view, or he says a lot of things that are not in the Bhagwatam. It's much more, it's, it's actually in many ways like Dvaraka rather than the way Vrindavan. And so they take this liberty. And also, same in the Ananda Vrindavan Champu by Kavi Karnapura. So, um, now, another way in which, um, pure devotees are not, they are pure devotees, but they're not doing time travel, and they're not, and, and they're not necessarily seeing all the details of other worlds. To give an example, uh, Prabhupada approved not only approved the sort of the, the picture of Srivas Thakur as a young brahmachari, though he was an elderly grihastha, he also approved many, many paintings that had Lord Indra in them. And Lord Indra, in virtually all those paintings, has dark hair. But Indra doesn't have dark hair. Actually, in the Rig Veda, and if my sources are right, verse 10.23.4, he is described, Indra is described as, first of all, "Hira Varna," his complexion is golden, so it's more Caucasian. And "Aruna," his hair is Aruna, which means, uh, blonde or tawny, which can mean sort of like blonde, you know, dark blonde or reddish. And so I don't think there's a single painting in ISKCON art, or a single painting in India, that actually depicts Indra the way he's described in the Rig Veda.
Another person that has blonde hair, you'll be surprised to hear this, maybe like a little dark blonde, but nonetheless blonde, is Narada Muni. And you will find that in the Shrimad Bhagavatam, 10th Canto, text 70, verse 32, his hair is described as "pinga." Pinga. P-I-N-G-A. And I will read to you, so you know it's not just one of my crazy ideas. I will read you what that word means in the Sanskrit dictionary. Pinga means, um, yellow, reddish-brown, tawny, which means sort of yellowish but a little darker, or just yellow. That's the standard word in Sanskrit for the word yellow, which we call blonde. And that is a description of Narada Muni. So, uh, again, okay, let's, let's go on.
One of the ways in which I am offending everything that's sacred in my, uh, reckless foray is that, uh, I don't understand there is absolute Vedic ethnicity, like Vedic architecture. But here's some, here, here's some scholarly information for you, that many, many temples, Vaishnava temples, Gaudiya Vaishnava temples, even Vrindavan, have a lot of Muslim influence here. Here are some statements that I looked up. "Persian influences entered North Indian Vaishnava temple architecture primarily in the 1500s onward, especially with the Vallabha Sampradaya, the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, and the Ramanandis. After 1550, North India was politically dominated by Mughal courts, governors, and landed elites. Vaishnava Sthapatis, unlike Shiva temples in some regions, often navigated Mughal patronage successfully. Many royal patrons were Hindu Rajas serving as Mughal vassals. This produced a hybrid aesthetic." And then it goes, and there's, there's a lot of very detailed information here. "Mughal architectural elements in Vaishnava temples, especially Gaudiya Vaishnava temples. These are Muslim architectural elements. The cusped, a multifoil arch, and these are very technical terms, is seen in the Govinda Temple in Vrindavan, Govindadev Temple, Madan Mohan, you all know that in Vrindavan, three Navji temples of Navadwip." And then it goes on and on. "The jar, which is a technical word, means an arched projecting balcony, originally a Rajasthani Mughal court feature. It became central to Pushya Marg temples for giving darshan nachi. The presence of finely carved stone screens, jali, is unmistakably Islamic. Persian chhatri, domed kiosks." Anyway, "Persian floral and geometric ornament. Lotus motifs are Indian, but stylized Persian styles, vines and geometric borders appear in temples from the 16th to 18th century, often mixed with Vaishnava iconography. The extensive use of polished lime plaster, a Mughal import." It goes on and on and on and on. "Some Chaitanya temples in Bengal and Vrindavan, built under late Mughal influence, increasing use of Mughal ornamental plaster and Persian floral carving, as in the Krishna Balaram Temple in Vrindavan."
So again, this myth that there is an eternal, standard, unchanging, "don't mess with it" ethnic tradition which involves architecture, cooking, dress, etc. Let's talk about dress. I got some few. I know you probably heard about this ad nauseam, but just take an anti-nausea pill, and I'll just give a few more facts you may not know specifically. So, close. The earliest proved use, like documented use of dhotis is in the 14th century, which is, you know, just, uh, hundred years or so before Lord Chaitanya. Sorry, is not mentioned until about 500 years ago. Not mentioned anywhere. Not described anywhere. Before European colonial influence, bare-breasted women were extremely common in Tamil Nadu, Kerala. It's really hot in those places. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and parts of Carnatica. In North India, it was less universal than the south, but widely attested.
Now, you've seen pictures of paintings of Krishna and with pants, these sort of tight pants and then sort of little skirt, men's skirt. Now, what I want to mention also is that we had lots of these paintings in our temples, and Prabhupada visited the temples. Prabhupada saw those paintings. He never said, "That's not Vedic." He saw these paintings. He'd been seeing them his whole life. He grew up in Vaishnava culture. So he knew all about these paintings and never, and but okay, Mughal Persian influence on trousers, pants. Indo-Persian courts popularized and in, in their language, pajama, pajamas, pajama, churidar, jama, upper robe. These entered Hindu courts by the 16th to 17th century and became normal elite clothing in Rajasthan and other states. Krishna in those paintings is dressed like a contemporary prince in the Mughal style, not like the Krishna of shastra. Bhakti Vikasa Swami, I don't think he ever complained about those Indian paintings or, you know, so, so Krishna in hundreds and thousands of Krishna art which is in many temples is temples without a peep out of Bhakti Vikasa Swami. Actually, it's not like the Krishna of shastra. It's like Mughal style tight pants or courtly Indo-Persian, no Sanskrit text, trousers for Krishna, pants. And as I've said, the way we dress Gaura-Nitai, which Prabhupada saw every day and, you know, enjoyed it, totally ahistorical. But Prabhupada didn't see a problem with that. Bhakti Vikasa sees a problem. But that's, anyway, I'm going to get to the whole thing.
What does the status of tradition in Vedic culture? That's another topic I want to get into. So, as I said, the earliest clear definite use of the word "dhotis" in vernacular languages, not Sanskrit, in the 14th century CE. So, um, so beginning in the late 16th century, Hindu courts in Rajasthan, the Himalayan foothills were deeply connected to the Mughal world, and, you know, uh, people that designed clothes, Persian miniature painting, textile styles, and court fashion spread widely among Hindus, among Vaishnavas, Hindu kings, Hindu kings employed Mughal-trained artists, they adopted Mughal dress, absorbed Mughal conventions. These are Gaudiya Vaishnavas, many of them, absorbed Mughal conventions of feminine modesty, head coverings, veils. They adopted Mughal pigments, pigments, paper, and painting techniques. In other words, there was massive Mughal influence because Krishna devotional art was court-sponsored. Painters naturally dressed Krishna and the gopis like contemporary nobles of their environment, not like figures from the ancient Puranas. So, main, the main visible Muslim Indo-Persian influences and depictions of Krishna gopis. Anyway, I, I've already said a lot of this, and there, I mean, there's a lot of technical information. I'm not boring you with, but these are not just sort of reckless generalizations. There's a huge amount of very technical academic information and so on.
Early Indian sculpture, which is all we have in Mathura, the Gupta dynasty, Nalanda, does not show women with covered heads. The Puranas do not mention this. And I should mention another thing which you will not find in scripture is calling women mother or mataji. That's another Hindu invention. You know, Chanakya, with all due respect, is not in a great acharya, who's pretty smart, but he says you should see women, you know, it's sort of a moral, like, sort of, you know, expose yourself to the threat of horrible incest, and that way you won't engage in illicit sex. It's just not Vedic. I mean, Chanakya, if he says something that is in, not that is in no scripture, no shastra, it doesn't make it Vedic because Chanakya, who was not an acharya, because he said it. So the covered head comes from the Mughal Persian norm, widely adopted by Hindu artists. Transferred this aesthetic to all depictions of women, including the gopis. Thus, covered gopi heads are the most obvious example of Muslim influence, Muslim artistic influence. So Mughal painting introduced, and think of even deities, almond-shaped eyes. The Six Goswamis, some of them had little deities with almond-shaped eyes. That comes from Mughal painting. Aquiline noses, Rajasthani art with the kind of those, you know, sharp-angled noses, that comes from Mughal painting. Persianate profile shading, [clears throat] uh, refined, elongated female silhouette. There's a lot of technical details. So, uh, anyway, architecture, I've already gone over, uh, many features. Cusped arches, scalloped windows, Persian chhatri units, Mughal gardens, Indo-Persian palace architecture. These have nothing to do with Puranic India, but reflect the world the painters lived in. And anyway, I mean, there's a lot more about the way the gopis are depicted wearing all kinds of Muslim-influenced clothes and pictures of the gopis. Uh, so, uh, I'll try to get, move on here quickly.
So, um, the Rajasthani adoption of Indo-Persian, Persian modesty norms. Persian paintings depict feminine decorum, not part of ancient Indian femininity. Has no textual basis in the Puranas. So, uh, you know, I've covered all these things, dress and architecture. Okay. Now, here's another big deal. I, I believe that, uh, Bhakti Vikasa Swami, my dear godbrother, who despite all my, uh, points, you know, he is my godbrother, um, he actually said something like, "It is authoritative." Now, the word "ita" is just a derivative word from "iti." It in Sanskrit is "thus," and "ha" is "it was," like "thus in the past." And it is not the same. It does not have the same meaning as "itihasa," which just means history in Sanskrit. This is a different word. Same, you know, half of it is the same root, but it doesn't have the same meaning. This is "ita," in other words, from "iti," from tradition. That's how you say tradition. And Bhakti Vikasa is actually saying that tradition is authoritative. You have to follow tradition. His whole thing is that tradition is authoritative, except it's not.
So, I'm going to give you some information here. Don't kill the messenger. Probably confirming all the worst fears of some extremely conservative devotees about my, you know, sort of inexorable slide into degradation. But anyway, so here are some points about "ita." In all major Vedanta traditions, Gaudiya, Sri Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, and Vallabha, in all the major, in all the important Vaishnava traditions, "ita," tradition, historical memory, custom, is decisively subordinate to shastra. In Indian epistemology, it means a report handed down by tradition, something people say, a collective memory or custom, like, like a historical custom. It is not "itihasa." It is not epic. It's not sacred history. Classical Nyaya, that's the system of logic in India, which, by the way, all the Vaishnava Vedantists followed. This is, you know, the school of logic, which, by the way, is theist. It's not atheist. It's not like Western logic. And all the great acharyas, you know, they just take it. That's the standard. You have to quote it if you're trying to make a logical point. It classifies it as not a significant pramana. It is not a significant form of evidence. It is unreliable, and you should believe it only if the real pramana, the real evidence, supports it.
So my question is, where is the pramana in shastra, the support for dress codes, stitched clothes? Because Sanatan Goswami, who's a great super acharya, Prabhupada said he's writing for householders, number one, in India, number two, hundreds of years ago, number three, that was not Rupa Goswami. In the Sixth Chapter of Nectar of Devotion, does not mention that as a fundamental principle of bhakti yoga. Hence, a detail, and a detail not even for us today. A detail which Prabhupada rejected in his own life. So Jiva Goswami repeatedly says that only shastra, specifically Shruti, Purana, Pancharatra, has binding authority. In Tattva Sandarbha, he says this, "Jiva shabda shastra alone is the supreme pramana for matters beyond sense perception." He accepts it, Purana as shastra, but never elevates it to an independent source of authority. Jiva treats it as non-authoritative. It helps clarify a point in shastra already taught by shastra. In other words, if we had statements in shastra saying, "Dress like this," "design buildings like that," or "offer these kinds of vegetarian foods to Krishna," or "that kind of architecture," but it can't invent things. It has no epistemic authority for Siddhanta. No epistemic authority for Siddhanta. In Govinda Bhashya, 1.1.3, Baladeva Vidyabhushana, and elsewhere, Baladeva is clearer. Locality, popular customs cannot override Shruti or Smriti. It is the weakest form of evidence with no doctrinal authority. In the Sri Vaishnava Ramanuja tradition, "ita" is not accepted as a pramana. It belongs to the fourth category, "lokiya," common belief. It may be harmless, but is never binding. Madhvacarya, let's, you know, have everyone come on in here. Madhvacarya is even stricter. Only Shruti, Smriti, Purana are valid. [clears throat] "Ita" is "lokiya" and has no doctrinal force. Pan-Indian, that means everywhere in India, Vedanta principles, all schools agree on a uniform epistemic hierarchy. That's epistemology, how do you know? You know, Shruti, Smriti, Pancharatra, etc. "Ita" sits at level four with merely sociological relevance. It's just sociological. Uh, so in Gaudiya Vaishnava, all classical Vaishnava traditions, "ita" has no binding authority, far below shastra. It cannot establish doctrine. And yet, and yet Bhakti Vikasa Maharaj claims that we must follow it. So if people in Vaishnavas in India wore dhotis, you have to wear a dhoti. Nothing in shastra, nothing in any shastra, but that's what people did, so that's authority. Uh, I, I don't think so.
So, um, last point, and then I will, uh, maybe finally release you from this, uh, harassment, and that is that, um, will we follow the glorious Gaudiya tradition of producing, not everyone, but systematically producing great devotional philosophers, great scholars, or will it be anti-intellectual and attack those who dare to think within the boundaries, within the boundaries of Siddhanta and shastra? We come from a great tradition, a great, powerful intellectual tradition. And merely because I don't reject that tradition and instead I try to educate myself, you know, to some extent, then, you know, I'm definitely an existential threat to everything that's good and holy. By the way, what is one of Lord Chaitanya's main names? Nimai Pandit. He was a pandit. He's obviously God. He knows everything. I mean, he's omniscient. But in his pastime form, he was a great scholar. And he used that scholarship to defeat the case of Kashmir Pandit, to defeat, uh, Prakashananda, to defeat Sarvabhauma. He used it to train the greatest scholars of their time, Ramananda Raya, the Six Goswamis, all great scholars, and then Bhakti Vinoda Thakur, Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada himself. So it's, but suddenly we have like this, what would you call it, kind of like this anti-academic, anti-intellectual thing where you're not preaching. I preach every day. I preach very strongly every day. But because, my dear Bhakti Vikasa Swami, it's not in your non-academic language, uh, therefore it must be traitorous. It must be a betrayal of everything. Because I'm following Prabhupada strictly and preaching to a certain class of educated people in the language of those people, making the points that atheism is nonsense, showing, proving that it's just philosophically nonsense, that we can show logically that atheism can never be proved logically. I've shown that. I've shown that the people who claim that species evolved without God are actually betraying science. It's false science when they say that. I've proved that logically. Now, this may not have caught your attention. Maybe all this stuff I'm doing, training a whole new generation of devotees to, in a very intellectually sophisticated way, defeat atheism, defeat materialism, establish the plausibility of what we're doing so that intelligent people at least open to it. None of that. But all it takes is one letter from one fool in Brazil, and you know, a whole lifetime service. So everything I'm doing, I'm not doing. All the good we're doing is bad because one person that you don't even know, and you didn't fact-check, and I could give you, I can give you hundreds, if not thousands, of names from Brazil of very intelligent people, very good devotees, very faithful devotees and Prabhupada and ISKCON and Krishna, who will tell you exactly the opposite.
So, uh, my dear Bhakti Vikasa Swami, all the best. Despite my fallen condition, I hope I said something which may, uh, you may find worth looking into. And, uh, I'm going to continue trying to carry out Prabhupada's order because, as Prabhupada made very, very clear, we have the mass, we need the class. Boil the, look, we have to create a new Brahman order. If we don't get the intelligent people, ISKCON is, is not going to save this planet. It's not going to save this planet if we don't get intelligent people, and they have their own language. For me, it's no different translating Prabhupada's books into Spanish, into Portuguese, or into the language of educated Western people. It's just another translation. And so, what, what your criticism sounds like to me is if you would have accused me of betraying Prabhupada because in Latin America, we were selling books in Spanish and Portuguese, not in English. Prabhupada did his books in English, and you're selling books in Spanish. Wouldn't it, frankly, I think it's equally irrational that when I translate Prabhupada's teachings, not mine, into [clears throat] the language of educated people, because Prabhupada ordered me to do that, that for you, I'm becoming degraded, and I used to be a good devotee. Uh, amazing.
So anyway, um, all the best. And, uh, I think I've explained what I mean. For anyone that listened to this whole thing, God, you should get a, some kind of prize for listening to all this. So, thank you all, and all the best. Bhakti Vikasa Swami is my godbrother. I wish him all the best. I've stated my points somewhat strongly because, you know, reciprocating. So, Hari Krishna. All glories to Prabhupada. All glories to his mission.